CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ Kyle Allen comes full circle Sunday _ playing Atlanta, in Charlotte's Bank of America Stadium, just like he did in his first-ever NFL action 11 months ago.
But while the opponent and the venue will be the same, almost everything else has changed. Allen, the 23-year-old Panthers quarterback, will start his eighth consecutive game Sunday. He is not only this team's quarterback of the present; he might well be its quarterback of the future.
In that Atlanta game Dec. 23, 2018, however, Allen had just been called up from the practice squad. When he suddenly entered the game because Taylor Heinicke got hurt, he was so new to everyone that TV play-by-play man Dick Stockton introduced him like this: "So Kyle Allen _ who played in five games for the Houston Texans last year and started three of them..."
That wasn't true at all. Allen had never played in a single NFL game, in Houston or anywhere else. Stockton was mistakenly reading off Allen's college stats from the University of Houston _ one of two Texas colleges where Allen had first won the starting QB job and then lost it.
"I think I threw a stop route to Curtis, maybe?" Allen guessed while recalling his first-ever NFL pass.
Not quite. The throw to Curtis Samuel was his second of the game. His first was a safe, short pass to Christian McCaffrey, followed by one to Samuel, followed by the first big throw of his career when he hit Jarius Wright for a 24-yard gain.
"The one I really remember is I threw a seam route to Jarius," said Allen, going on to explain he had been giving himself a pep talk on the sideline shortly before that play. "I was like, 'All right, you've just got to go play. You've got to go trust what you see."
On the throw to Wright, Allen looked at two other covered receivers first, then found the veteran on his third read. "This is what it's like in practice," he thought to himself. "It's not much different."
Allen threw only one more pass that day _ he went 4-for-4 for 38 yards _ before Heinicke returned to play the rest of the game with an injured left elbow. Carolina lost, 24-10. At the end of the contest, Allen found his father and tossed him his No. 7 jersey.
"He said, 'Here you go, Dad,' " Mike Allen remembered. "It was quite a moment."
That night, when the Allen family gathered at Kyle's apartment in Charlotte, the quarterback told his father he had found out something about the season finale at New Orleans.
"What are you doing next weekend?" Kyle asked his dad. "Because I think I'm starting."
